Ah, what a pickle I’ve gotten myself into. I need to climb down from this table if I’m ever going to meet up with my teammates and finish the game, but the stupid zombies cannot get me if I stay up here. It’s an absolute gherkin, I tell you. A real cornichonundrum.
The steel pipe in my right hand is doing a decent job of whittling them down, and the torch in my left lets me see the expressions of impotent rage on their flaky faces. Still, the pipe won’t last forever – this is videogame steel, the crumbliest steel there is. Thank god No More Room In Hell 2 doesn’t bother with the hunger or rest parts of the survival equation. I can, in theory, stay on this table forever.
I bet you’re wondering how I got here, smugly trivialising the otherwise excellently tense horror atmosphere. So was I, actually. I hadn’t heard of No More Room In Hell until Jake ‘Hit Reload’ Tucker informed me it was a Half Life 2 mod. Developers Torn Banner have pedigree in this space, having spun out their studio and Chivalry series from that game’s Age Of Chivalry mod. 13 years later, after wrapping up medieval multiplayer disembowel-em-up Chivalry 2, Torn Banner are giving the horror mod a fresh coat of bowels. Sensing a bit of a theme here, actually (the theme is bowels).
Or maybe not, as it happens. “This is not a game about killing zombies,” says game director Leif Walter. It’s just, well, I’ve got this gun in my hand, Leif. Your team worked hard on this gun, right? It feels rude of me not to test it out just a little.
It doesn’t take too long after loading into the huge map to stumble upon my first zombie, who goes down easy. You’ve clearly underestimated my ability to identify which part of a zombie is the head, Torn Banner. Piece of piss! Flash forward to about five of them munching my face off. Oh, it’s not a game about killing zombies. Right, right. Let’s try again.
Eight-player “co-op with consequences,” is how Torn Banner describe this one. They’re aiming for a “classic horror film experience” rather than any sort of power fantasy. You’ll be assigned a choice of three differently-specialised characters before you start a match, and they’ll gain skills as you complete games. Die just the once, though, and you’ll have to create a new one. Don’t want to die? A common perspective I’m sympathetic to. There’s a way around that, actually.
“What we’re really excited about,” says Walter, “is our take on the core formula. Even though it’s eight-player co-op, you’re not all going to start together. You’re all starting alone in the dark, with your flashlight and your crappy iron pipe, and few bullets in your revolver, trying to take your first steps in the unfolding apocalypse.” If I can stress one thing from my time with a preview build that nailed the atmosphere enough for me to overlook the expected jank, it’s that teaming up really is essential. “Surviving together, or ending up having to die alone in the darkness,” as Walter puts it.
To break the omniscient kayfabe of games reporting for a moment, picture me scrubbing through my OBS recordings for Torn Banner’s introductory bits before the servers opened, only to hear something I’d missed last time. Walter mentions a compass, and its ability to show you other player markers in 3D space. I can’t test this, because I missed it, and now the build isn’t available. All I can do is longingly gaze at the compass in this gameplay snippet, wondering what might have been. Now? Well. I’m alone. And also stuck on top of a table, as you know.
I eventually thin the horde and jump down. The pipe has a hefty swipe to it, and a nice push for crowd control.
The reason I’m in this building – much of the map is highways, forests, and industrial wasteland – is that it contains one of the sub-objectives. Your initial main goal each game is to meet up with your team in the centre of the map, but you’ll encounter other tasks on the way. Shut down a toxic gas leak, or restore a radio broadcast. Once sorted, you’ll be able to secure equipment caches to help you and your team.
Again, though, I must reiterate: zombies. Travelling across the map, I soon learned to love my torch far more than any pistol, rifle, or shotgun I found. There’s a touch of ambient illumination, but these forests and roads are otherwise as dark as you’d expect, and every hiding place you can take advantage of might also hide a napping corpse. The relief of finding a store or a campfire is soon tempered, too. That’s where the zombies are.
Going inside at all, I quickly learned, is an act of calculated risk. Too many corners to get trapped in, and chokepoints don’t help all that much when you’ve got six bullets to your name. Even a seemingly abandoned location can soon turn nasty. For being brainless, decomposing idiots, these zombos are good at hiding. I’m soon surrounded and backed into a corner, being aggressively lunched upon like so many meal deal Double Deckers outside the Boots opposite an office.
You do have one last Hail Mary once downed: an injector than can bring you back to life. As far as I could tell though, it gets interrupted if you’re constantly being attacked, meaning it’s only useful if you’ve got a teammate around to distract the zombies. I think Torn Banner have achieved exactly what they were going for, in this regard at least. It doesn’t take long for me to start taking every action very seriously. I move slowly and cautiously. When I do have to fire off a few rounds, I feel like I’ve already lost.
The loneliness is somewhat countered, at least, by who I’m 95% is the brilliant Elias Toufexis giving you pep talks over the radio. “Thousands of lives will be lost if you can’t get this under control!” he warns, urging me towards the power plant at the centre of the map. Thing is, Elias, this table is really safe. I’m starting to really enjoy it up here. The zombies keep swiping at me. Growling. Moaning. I simply do not wish to leave my flatpack kingdom. I fear I’ve said too much already, really. Will Torn Banner patch out this exploit, leaving me to fend for myself in cruel, table-less world? No More Room In Hell 2 launches on early access the 22nd of October.